The merger of the only two satellite radio companies has been approved by the Justice Department who determines whether or not it would negatively affect consumers or not. The only hurdle left is the FCC.

The merger of the only two satellite radio companies has been approved by the Justice Department who determines whether or not it would negatively affect consumers or not. The only hurdle left is the FCC.

The big winners were AT&T, Verizon, Qualcomm, and Frontier Wireless, Google didn’t win a thing. VZW took most of the popular C-Block, and ATT picked up 227 licenses from the B-Block.
VZW seems to be the biggest spender dropping a few million short of half of what the entire spectrum sold for at 9.63 billion dollars, that secured them all of C-Block save for Puerto Rico, Alaska, and the Gulf of Mexico, basically the areas where they wouldn’t make any money anyways. AT&T spent about 6.64 billion dollars in the auction which got them a 12MHz spectrum of Block B.
They expected to sell the entire band for 10 billion dollars. When bidding had closed, the D block had not sold for what they expected out of it, but the whole band had sold for a grand total of 19.592 billion.
So ever since XM and Sirius even mentioned the possibility that they might be merging they have had to battle the FCC, the NAB, and Clear Channel to the death. Well apparently they got past the FCC (sort of) and past the NAB and now their last opponent is Clear Channel.

The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic is headed to one or more mobile carriers soon as it just got FCC approval. Really it’s the same as the 5310 but with a few upgrades.

Apparently that rumor from not too long ago that Verizon and Vodafone had worked out a deal to bring the Croix stateside came to fruition. Technically its called the Samsung u940 but really its just a Croix converted to CDMA for use on Verizon’s network.

This will be the third 3G phone the 3G-less network provider has dropped recently. I guess this means they are really off their rocker, or really serious about finally opening up their 3G network.

So a little back story, a guy found a Nokia handset that just passed through the FCC and it was called the 8900. Then he gets contacted by another guy, who apparently has the new device who tells him it’s really called the 8800e so we could be looking at 2 new, very similar Nokia devices dropping soon, or it could just be the 8800e.

There is a confidentiality agreement filed with the FCC, but it ends on the 16th of this month. I don’t know if this is coincidence or not, but that’s apparently exactly two days before Nokia’s third quarter finances are due to be reported.
Not much is known, as manufacturers are getting smarter and filing to have just about everything blocked from public view. What is known is that its made by Nokia, fits the pictured outline, and isn’t a phone.

We also know that it will have Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS all built in. Other than that we don’t know much else other than it did pass all its tests, so it should make it to market soon.